Photo Tips from Across America

Glossary

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Someone recently observed that pictures provide such instant communication these days that "keep in touch" is not only what we say, it's what we do. Combine the freewheeling ease of digital cameras with the power and speed of the web and email, and we can communicate with anyone, anytime, from just about anywhere.

This wasn't something that Kristine Bosworth thought a lot about in her previous job as supervisor of the service department at Nikon's headquarters in New York, but when she became a technical training specialist for Consumer Digital Products and Compact Cameras, things changed.

"I cover half the United States, from the Mississippi River to the East Coast," Kris says, "and that's a lot of territory that was new to me." So when a co-worker suggested she keep a diary about her travels, Kris gave it a try. But after only two trips, she realized that words weren't the way she wanted to capture what she was seeing and feeling. "I started taking pictures and emailing them to my mom. It was basically—here's where I am now, this is what I saw."

Soon other family members were getting the photos; then friends and co-workers joined the list. "Now I have probably 170 names on the list," Kris says. "Sometimes I send photos a couple of times a week, sometimes once a week, depending on my schedule and what I'm seeing. I always try to give a little information about how the picture was taken and which COOLPIX camera I used to take it."

Kris tries to take her photos in her free time before and after the training sessions she conducts for dealers, sales personnel and Nikon tech support people. "I'm big on early morning and late afternoons for photography," she says, and that preference fits well with her work schedule.

"For me the satisfaction is in sharing my images," Kris says, "but lately I've started to get some of my photographer friends on the list to respond to the images and critique them, which is really cool. I love getting feedback from photographers who I admire. And at the same time I get the fulfillment of saying, I'm out here on the road, here's a place you may not have seen, and this is what it's like."

Ultimately, Kris's postcards are as much about her as they are about what she's seeing. "There are times when I pick up the camera and think, this is going to be a good postcard to send, but there are other times when I'm just shooting because I want to capture my vision of something. When you shoot like that, you don't have to think about being creative—you just are because it's your personal photography."